Making the homeland safe for air travel

“I don’t know if she thought my mom had a bomb in her Depends or what.” — Sally Moon on the treatment of her wheelchair-bound elderly mother by a Transportation Security Administration screener

This is outrageous. The TSA is under the gun after a recent incident involving an 83-year-old woman at the Denver International Airport. The new Homeland security effort to protect the public now involves putting the screws to frail grandmothers with dementia.

The incident at Denver International Airport occurred eight days ago when Sally Moon, her sister and a Frontier Airlines employee were transporting Bernice “Bea” Bogart to a special security screening area. Moon’s sister, who did not have concourse clearance and the Frontier employee were left behind as Moon pushed her mother to the screening site.The TSA goons not only made the woman get up, but issued threats.

Moon had been told by Frontier and TSA staff that screeners would not require Bogart to leave her chair for the security check, so she turned to put her mother’s carry-on luggage through the x-ray device. When she turned back, she discovered her mother had been picked out for further screening and was out of her chair, “hobbling” through a glass-walled corridor.

“There were no grab bars,” Moon told the Rocky Mountain News. “What I could see really was her fingers trying to hang onto a little ledge.”

The TSA goons not only made the woman get up, but issued threats.

Moon says she instinctively reached out to assist her mother, fearing another fall and another broken hip.

“Don’t touch her!” Moon says the screener warned.

Moon attempted to tell the young screener, a woman in her mid-to-late 20s, that her mother was under doctor’s orders not to stand without her four-wheeled walker, but the screener shot back, “You’d better change your attitude. Or do you want me to make it so you don’t fly today?”